from Raju Mudhar of the Toronto Star,

“Some people say you don’t watch shows for the host, well, if that was true, we wouldn’t pay them what we pay them,” says Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties at Rogers.

“I think Ron will have a major impact on ratings. We already saw it in World Cup of Hockey, because people want to hear what Ron has to say. His ability to talk hockey is different than most hosts . . . he’s just got an ease of being able to talk hockey because of his encyclopedic knowledge.”

That said, people didn’t follow MacLean to Sundays the past two years, with ratings averaging less than a half million for that night, which is considered disappointing, although it might help now that he links both weekend broadcasts.

When asked what all this says about hockey fans, and whether they need their coverage to be like comfort food, MacLean doesn’t fight that I’ve just basically called him mashed potatoes.

“Well, I think we want everything to be like that. I think we want everything to be like Norman Rockwell in the end. We flip back and forth between hero worship and witch hunts in all that we do. If you catch us on a good day we’re generous and loving, and if you catch us on a bad day, we’re critical to the point of cynical,” he says. “Obviously, I am just the beneficiary of that epic lesson. It is one of those tested and true formulas that I happen to get caught up in, but it’s because I’ve been here for 28 years. It’s as simple as that.”

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